“Smeman  ©atljoHe” 

A  BRIEF  CRITIQUE 


* 


By 

CHARLES  HENRY  BABCOCK,  D.  D 

Contributing  Editor  of  “  The  Chronicle  ” 


* 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  SOCIETY 

FOR  THE 

PROMOTION  OF  EVANGELICAL  KNOWLEDGE 

1913 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/americancatholicOObabc 


“£lmnican  Catfjolic” 

A  BRIEF  CRITIQUE 


* 


By 

CHARLES  HENRY  BABCOCK,  D.  D 

Contributing  Editor  of  “  The  Chronicle” 


* 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  SOCIETY 

FOR  THE 

PROMOTION  OF  EVANGELICAL  KNOWLEDGE 


1913 


THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL 
EDUCATIONAL  SERIES 

Already  Issued: 

I.  PROTESTANTISM 

By  Leighton  Parks,  D.D., 

Rector  of  St.  Bartholomew’s  Church,  New 
York. 

II.  THE  A  T  TITUDB  OF  PRAYER-BOOK 
CHURCHMEN  TOWARDS  THE  LATEST  AT¬ 
TEMPT  TO  CHANGE  THE  NAME  OF  THE 
CHURCH. 

By  Randolph  H.  McIyim,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
D.C.L.,  Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Epiphany, 
Washington,  D.  C. 

III.  SPIRITUAL  RENAISSANCE:  AN  ESSAY  IN 
PROTESTANTISM 

By  Charles  Henry  Babcock,  D.D., 

General  Chairman  of  the  Church  Congress  (of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church)  in  the 
United  States. 

IY.  “PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL:”  A  PLEA  FOR 
THE  CONSTITUTIONAL  STUDY  OF  THE 
CHURCH’S  NAME 

By  Henry  S.  Nash,  D.D., 

Professor,  Episcopal  Theological  School,  Cam¬ 
bridge,  Mass. 


5 


V.  PROTESTANTISM  AND  DEMOCRACY:  A 
PRESENT  DAY  PROBLEM 

By  Leighton  Parks,  D.D., 

Rector  of  St.  Bartholomew’s  Church,  New 
York. 

VI.  THE  HOLY  CATHOLIC  CHURCH— A  QUEST 

By  John  G.  Bacchus,  D.D., 

Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation, 
Brooklyn,  N.  Yr. 

VII.  “AMERICAN  CATHOLIC A  BRIEF  . 
CRITIQUE 

By  Charles  Henry  Babcock,  D.D., 

General  Chairman  of  the  Church  Congress  in 
the  United  States. 

Contributing  Editor  of  “The  Chronicle.” 


6 


I. 


“AMERICAN  CATHOLIC.”* 

When,  as  now,  it  has  been  definitely  proposed  to  erase 
“Protestant  Episcopal"  from  the  ’scutcheon  of  this 
church  in  order  to  write  “American  Catholic”  in  its 
place  it  is  natural  for  us  to  seek  to  know  the  value  of  the 
proposed  new  name.  We,  therefore,  address  ourselves  to 
a  short  and  easy  consideration  of  the  possible  profit,  or 
loss,  involved  in  this  change  of  name  which  we  are,  with 
such  calm  assurance,  invited  to  make.  Incidentally  we 
will  point  to  some  historical  and  to  some  liturgical  facts 
of  permanent  significance  and  of  present  use  to  us  in 
the  handling  of  our  subject. 

First,  as  to  “Catholic” — what  is  it  ecclesiastically 
today  but  a  word  which  has  lost  all  meaning  save 
that  which  designates  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  ? 
It  had  great  meaning  once — this  term  so  aged, — but 
it  has  been  emptied  of  that  meaning,  now  many  a 
day.  Indeed,  the  word  has  had  divers  and  sundry 
meanings  during  its  long  existence, — which  of  them, 
we  ask,  except  the  one  already  mentioned,  really  now 
survives  ?  What  sort  of  Catholic,  then,  is  intended 
by  the  proposers  of  the  new  name  ?  Are  we  to  take 
the  Word  in  its  earliest  sense,  as  meaning  all  the  bap¬ 
tized  everywhere,  as  distinguished  from  the  disciples  in 
some  particular  locality,  say  Antioch  or  Jerusalem? 
Or,  are  we  to  understand  by  it  the  later  connotation, 

*  The  substance  of  these  brief  essays  appeared  as  editorials  in  the 
“Chronicle”  magazine  during  1912-13.  C.  H  B. 


7 


of  all  who  hold  “the  correct  opinion”  in  theology?  Or, 
are  we  to  take  it,  in  the  still  later  sense,  of  those  who 
submit  to  Papal  authority;  or,  in  the  sense  of  the  ad¬ 
herents  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  or,  with  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  Boston-Milwaukee-California  school  of  cath¬ 
olicity  in  our  own  time  and  country?  These  are  rea¬ 
sonable  questions.  If  we  are  to  be  “Catholic”  we  surely 
must  know  of  what  sort ,  and  the  varieties  of  Catholi¬ 
cism  rival  in  number  the  various  Protestant  “sects” 
upon  which  so  much  “Catholic”  vituperation  has  been 
expended.  And  then,  in  connection  with  this,  as  to 
“American,” — what  is  meant  by  that?  Is  the  word 
here  to  convey  to  our  minds  North,  or  South  or  Cen¬ 
tral  American?  Names,  we  should  remember,  are  signs 
of  things  and  when  we  are  requested  to  be  “American 
Catholic”  it  is  in  good  order  to  inquire  what  sort  of 
thing  that  is.  We  are  suspicious  that  the  brand  of 
Catholic  for  the  most  part  existing  in  Central  or  in 
South  America  and  parts  adjacent  would  not  blend 
with  the  proposed  Protestant  Episcopal  variety  without 
considerable  resultant  discoloration  and  effervesence. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  “American  Catholic”  is  a  con¬ 
tradiction  in  terms,  as  if  one  should  say  a  “Local  Uni¬ 
versal,”  or  a  “Partial  Whole.”  The  proposal  of  it  as  a 
substitute  for  the  name  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  may  provoke  an  indulgent  and  deferential  smile, 
due  to  the  ancient  atmosphere  in  which  it  was  gener¬ 
ated,  but  surely  it  is  not  to  be  very  seriously  taken  by 
any  modern  body  alive  to  the  fitness  of  things. 

One  of  the  irrefragable  truths  which  ultimately  dom¬ 
inate  church  and  state  is  that  “youth  will  be  served,” 
which  may  be  also  rendered  “the  world  moves  on !” 


8 


The  world  moved  on  in  due  time  to  Protestantism  and 
the  measure  of  its  progress  was  seen  in  the  fourteenth, 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  The  impetus  of  that 
stupendous  and  splendid  movement  is  far  from  being 
spent  and  its  destination  has  not  yet  been  reached. 
The  dream-children  of  the  Middle  Ages  born  in  our 
day  cannot  be  expected  to  appreciate  the  value  of  the 
trend  of  the  world's  young,  vigorous,  religious  life  of 
these  glorious  and  entrancing  times.  It  would  be  too 
much  to  demand  of  such  that  they  accept  with  eager 
alacrity  Protestantism  with  all  the  priceless  modernity 
with  which  it  is  bound  up  and  of  which  it  is  a  vital 
part.  Their  religious  convictions  are  for  the  most  part 
rooted  in  times  agone  and  dim  with  distance.  That 
distance,  somehow,  does  not  lend  enchantment  to  our 
view  of  many  of  the  religious  sentiments  and  practices 
of  which  it  vouchsafes  us  a  partial  revelation.  Are  we 
to  permit  any  man  or  any  number  of  men  to  bring  out 
of  that  dim  distance  Catholic,  the  old,  and  compel  us 
to  wed  it  to  American,  the  young,  for  the  institution 
of  a  new  family  of  heaven  on  earth  ?  Aside  from  the 
absurdity  of  the  family  name — “ American  Catholic,” — 
which  would  be  thus  perpetrated,  there  is  an  incongrui¬ 
ty  of  age  and  origin  which  protests  loud  and  long 
against  such  an  unnatural  marriage.  Before  any  man 
or  any  number  of  men  can  do  that  thing  and  bind  us 
to  it,  they  must  create  a  condition  of  things  suited  to 
their  purpose.  They  must  secure  consent  to  repudiate 
the  modern  and  adopt  the  ancient,  as,  for  example, 
abandon  the  railway  for  the  post  coach,  and  the  steam¬ 
ship  for  the  slave-rowed  galley;  legislate  out  of  ex¬ 
istence  all  modern  means  of  locomotion;  extinguish  the 


9 


electric  lights  and  return  to  candles ;  smash  machinery 
in  all  its  uses  and  revert  to  hand  labor  exclusively; 
banish  the  Copernican,  and  re-establish  the  Ptolemaic, 
astronomy  and  do  a  lot  of  things  equally  preposterous 
and  injurious  to  human  life.  Let  it  all  go  together, — 
this  odious  Protestantism,  and  when  his  gone,  the  fit¬ 
ness  of  things  will  countenance  the  proposed  wedding 
of  the  aged  and  the  youthful  by  the  adoption  of  “Amer¬ 
ican  Catholic”  as  a  substitute  for  the  present  and  the 
eminently  appropriate  name  of  our  Church.  But  let 
us  congratulate  our  selves  that  such  a  condition  of 
things  is  not  yet,  and  probably  will  never  come  to  be. 
As  the  late  Bishop  of  Connecticut  used  sometimes  com¬ 
ically  to  say,  when  considering  something  which  seemed 
ludicrously  impossible,  so  we  in  the  present  case  may 
exclaim,  “Non  tempus  uno,”  and  adopt  the  good 
Bishop’s  translation,  “Nary  time  once”  ! 


II. 

m 

We  read  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  that  “the  dis¬ 
ciples  were  called  Christians  first  in  Antioch.”  And 
as  we  read  we  muse  and  wonder  if  future  generations 
will  somewhere  find  it  recorded  that  the  disciples  were 
called  Christians  last  by  a  certain  sect  within  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  which  substituted  “Cath¬ 
olics”  for  “Christians”  when  speaking  of  themselves  in 
the  Church  of  Christ.  The  wonder  is  not  without  color 
of  justification  in  view  of  the  present  vogue  of  this 
word  “Catholic.”  The  minds  of  Churchmen  and  others 
have  been  assiduously  sown  with  it  for  long  and  the 


10 


verbal  harvest  from  that  sowing  is  now  abundant. 
We  have,  springing  up  on  every  side  the  plainest  evi¬ 
dences  of  this.  There  is  a  rich  multiplicity  of  things 
“Catholic”  by  name.  We  have  pressed  upon  us  catholic 
views,  catholic  practices,  catholic  dogma,  catholic  in¬ 
terpretations,  catholic  usages,  catholic  vestments,  cath¬ 
olic  statesmen,  catholic  aspirations  and — to  go  no  fur¬ 
ther — even  catholic  Congregationalists,  which  last  are 
quite  as  paradoxical  as  the  would-be  “American  Catho¬ 
lics”  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church.  What  does 
it  all  mean?  It  means,  if  we  may  venture  to  say  so, 
that  a  new  fashion  ecclesiastical  has  come  to  town, 
This  new  style  changes  quite  marvellously  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  those  who  adopt  it.  The  “disciples  in  Antioch” 
plainly  habited  as  mere  “Christians”  would  hardly  be 
recognized  in  our  kaleidoscopic  catholicity  as  learners  in 
the  school  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  word  Christian  seems 
in  some  danger,  at  any  rate,  of  extinction — of  being 
lost  from  the  lips  of  men.  “Christian”  is  apparently 
very  much  out  of  date  and  behind  the  times  with  our 
ecclesiastical  fashionables.  Derived  as  it  is  from  the 
Master’s  most  significant  title  and  having,  moreover, 
the  sanction  of  remote  antiquity, — it  is  nevertheless 
being  set  aside  in  favor  of  this  word  “Catholic,”  the 
present  day  significance  of  which,  is  so  difficult  to  as¬ 
certain.  We  wonder  at  the  seeming  attractiveness  of 
the  latter  word.  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  it 
came  into  churchly  being  as  a  colloquialism.  It  must 
have  been  used  casually  in  conversation.  When  people 
in  the  earliest  Christian  times,  wanted  to  speak  of  the 
Church  “on  the  whole”  they  said,  “Catholic”  and  every 


11 


listening  body  knew  what  was  meant.  From  employ¬ 
ment  in  that  easy  way  it  would  naturally  acquire  a  sort 
of  “Use”  which  would  gradually  bring  it  into  literature 
and  it  would  in  consequence  harden  into  a  technical 
term.  Thus  used  it  was  before  very  long  applied  to  in¬ 
dicate,  not  only  the  “whole”  church,  but  the  “whole” 
orthodox  or  “correct”  teaching  as  well.  But  so  far  as 
authoritative  official  sanction  is  concerned  “Catholic” 
was  rather  late  in  getting  it.  The  word  did  not  appear 
at  all  in  the  Creed  of  the  Council  of  Nice  (A.  D.  325) 
but  was  added  to  the  Nicene  Creed  at  the  Council  of 
Constantinople  (A.  D.  381).  Tt  was  first  inserted  in 
the  so-called  Apostles’  Creed  in  the  fifth  century  (A. 
D.  452)  by  Nicetas,  bishop  of  Aquileia — a  pretty  far 
cry  from  the  birthtime  of  Christianity !  The  word 
thus  belated  in  recognition  officially  by  the  Church 
seems  to  have  been  one  of  those  almost  fortuitous  ones 
which  sometimes  creep  into  language  and  presently  ac¬ 
quire  an  importance  to  which  they  are  not  intrinsically 
entitled.  It  emitted  its  greatest  glory  in  the  shadowy  - 
Middle  Ages  when  the  “organic  unity”  of  the  One  Holy 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church  made  possible  (let  us 
not  forget  it !)  the  most  iniquitous  ecclesiastical  tyranny 
the  Christian  world  has  known. 

We  observe  that  “Catholic”  was  not,  and  is  not, 
essential  to  the  Christian  religion.  Indeed,  it  is  not 
essential  to  anything  save  one  of  the  weaknesses  of 
human  nature,  namely,  a  better-than-thou  sort  of  spirit 
in  matters  churchly.  Why  a  “better-than-thou”  spirit 
on  account  of  “Catholic,”  it  is  difficult  to  explain,  but, 
notwithstanding,  we  have  seen  it  in  the  flesh.  And  yet 


12 


to  use  this  word  without  connecting’  it  with  some  gen¬ 
eric*  term  to  vitalize  it  is  to  express,  in  strictness,  noth¬ 
ing  at  all.  To  say,  ‘'I  am  a  Catholic'’  without  adding 
“Christian,"  or  some  other  interpretative  expression, 
means  merely,  “I  am  on  the  whole,”  or  “I  am  general," 
or  “universal.”  Hence,  as  we  have  said,  the  word  was 
never  essential  to  Christianity  but  was  merely  descrip¬ 
tive  of  some  aspects  or  conditions  existing  in  the  Church. 
Very  different  in  kind  is  the  name  Christian  applied  in 
Xew  Testament  times  to  the  disciples  at  Antioch.  It 
may  have  been  originally  used  as  a  derisive  epithet  by 
the  enemies  of  the  religion  of  the  Risen  One ;  but,  never¬ 
theless,  adopted  by  His  disciples  it  became  the  only 
really  essential  name  for  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ. 
It  is  the  generic  term  in  relation  to  which  all  other  de¬ 
scriptive  titles  are  subservient  or,  it  may  be,  antagon¬ 
istic.  It  is  the  necessary  antithesis  of  “heathen”  or 
“pagan'’  while  “Catholic"  is  not  necessarily  antithetical, 
or  opposed,  to  either  of  them.  Speaking  hypercritic- 
ally  one  might  conceivably  be  a  catholic  heathen  or  a 
catholic  pagan,  for  “Catholic,”  as  we  have  intimated,  is 
not  generic  but  accidental  or  dependent  on  circum¬ 
stances  for  signification.  Of  course,  we  know  there  are 
some  who  base  the  meaning  of  “Catholic”  upon  the 
famous  dictum  of  a  gentleman  of  the  fifth  century, 
known  in  history  as  Vincent  of  Lerins,  who  defined 
Catholics  as  those  who  hold  and  teach  those  and  only 
those  doctrines  of  the  Church  which  have  been  be¬ 
lieved  “everywhere,  always  and  by  all.”  This  at  first 
blush  seems  plausible.  But  the  insuperable  obstacle  to 
extracting  clarity  or  comfort  from  this  definition  is  that 
there  are  not,  and  never  have  been,  any  such  doctrines. 


13 


There  is  not  a  dogma  of  the  church  or  a  teaching  in 
Christendom  which  has  not  been  stoutly  controverted 
or  utterly  rejected  sometime,  by  some  Christians  some¬ 
where.  If,  therefore,  we  hold  a  brief  for  this  Vin¬ 
centian  rule  we  can  exploit  it  only  by  arguing  in  a 
vicious  circle,  which  will  land  us  in  the  conclusion  that 
there  are  a  number  of  doctrines  which  have  been  re¬ 
ceived  in  the  Church  “always  and  everywhere/’  by  all 
those  who  have  always  and  everywhere  received  them. 
This  is  doubtless  satisfactory  to  the  Vincentian  type  ol 
mind  and  the  rest  of  the  world  who  “know  not  the 
law”  are,  also  doubtless,  cursed.  It  must  not,  however, 
be  left  unnoticed  in  connection  with  this  that  many 
men  of  high  ability  and  reputation,  to  whom,  for  many 
reasons,  we  doff  our  hats  in  respect  and  admiration, 
have  been  led  into  the  aforesaid  Vincentian  delusion 
by  an  o’erweening  desire  to  share  with  the  Church  of 
Rome  possession  of  the  name  “Catholic”  altho’  held  in 
what  they  regard  as  a  better  because  a  more  Christian 
sense.  But  do  we  really  want  to  possess  that  word  in 
our  name  at  all  ? — a  word  lacking,  as  it  is,  in  essential¬ 
ness  and  exhibiting  in  its  history  only  an  arbitrary,  or 
else  an  ambiguous,  character.  Would  it  bring  us  any¬ 
thing  more  than  confusion  on  the  one  hand  and  de¬ 
rision  on  the  other?  Can  we  possibly  have  any  use  for 
it  in  our  work  in  the  time  o'  day  in  which  we  live  and 
labor?  We  cannot  perceive  that  we  have,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  we  are  quite  sure  that  we  have  not. 

When,  therefore,  we  are  solicited  by  a  fraction  of  our 
Church,  obsessed  with  the  antique,  to  denude  ourselves 
of  our  good  and  comprehensive  Name  and  reclothe  our¬ 
selves  in  “American  Catholic”  we  are  shy — we  hang 


14 


our  heads  in  contemplation  of  the  proposed  new  ap¬ 
parel  as  we  modestly  protest,  “We  would  rather  be  ex¬ 
cused,  sirs,  if  you  please,”  especially  as  the  identical  title 
proposed  has  been  adopted  and  used  by  Roman  Catho¬ 
lics  in  this  country  in  describing  the  work  of  their 
Church  in  these  United  States ! 


III. 

Certain  names  always  bring  to  mind,  in  their  use, 
certain  other  names  associated  with  them  historically 
or  otherwise.  This  is  a  mere  commonplace  in  psychol¬ 
ogy,  but  it  has  interest  in  connection  with  our  present 
subject.  Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  illustrate: 
When  we  hear  some  one  say  “Westminster  Abbey”  we 
at  once  recur  to  Edward  the  Confessor  and  not  to  him 
alone  but,  if  we  have  a  range  of  memories,  to  the  great 
abbots  and  deans  of  Westminster  and  other  celebrities 
as  well.  Or,  if  the  name  of  Pickwick — unique  creation 
of  Charles  Dickens’  genius — occurs  in  conversation 
there  troop  along  inevitably  with  that  name  in  our 
minds  Mrs.  Bardell  and  Sergeant  Buzzfuz  and  also  the 
immortal  Wellers,  Tony  and  Sam.  Similarly  with 
other  names,  too  numerous  and  quite  unnecessary  to 
mention,  and  conspicuous  amongst  them,  for  our  pur¬ 
pose,  is  that  well-worn  and  over-fondled  name  “catho¬ 
lic.”  At  mention  of  it  there  rise  to  mental  view  St. 
Peter’s  and  the  Vatican  and  an  endless  procession  of 
popes,  councils,  cardinals,  inquisitors,  priests  and 
masses,  but  always  and  everywhere  and  above  all, 
priests, — not  only  the  officials  but  the  function  and  the 


15 


fundamental  notion  of  priesthood — are  conjured  up  by 
association  of  ideas  with  “catholic.”  We  say  “catholic” 
and  immediately  we  think  “priest/'  If  we  are  de¬ 
clared  “catholics"  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  we  be¬ 
lieve  in  priests,  for  “priest”  is  a  cardinal  note  of 
“catholic.”  And  then  believing  in  priests  we  believe 
in  priestly  sacrifices,  for  priests  involve  sacrifices  and 
altars  upon  which  to  offer  them  and  consequently  priest¬ 
ly  interventions  between  God  and  men.  It  seems  quite 
superfluous  to  dwell  upon  this  statement  of  facts.  It  is, 
to  our  thinking,  as  plain  as  unclouded  sunrise  that 
“catholic”  and  “priest”  go  together  and  also  that  “priest” 
means  essentially  a  sacrificing  official  who  in  his  palm¬ 
iest  days,  either  personally  or  by  an  assistant,  cut  the 
throat  of  the  victim  and  used  the  blood  that  therefrom 
flowed  as  a  sacrificial  means  to  placate  an  offended 
deity. 

Now,  hard  by  the  residence  of  priesthood  there  runs 

a  line  of  cleavage  in  the  Christian  Church.  Upon  one 

side  of  that  line  are  those  who  delight  to  be  called 

“catholics”  and  who  hold  the  theory  that  the  Christian 

«/ 

Ministry  is  a  priesthood.  That  theory  is  known  as 
Sacerdotalism  and  those  who  hold  it  are  called  sacer- 
dotalists.  They  came  to  be  historically  what  they  are 
because  Paganism  and  Judaism  were  what  they  were, 
outside  of  and  before  the  Church.  In  other  words 
Paganism  and  Judaism  are  responsible  for  the  being 
of  “priests”  in  Christendom.  The  infant  Church  of 
Christ  was  innocent  of  all  such  officials.  There  is  no 
mention  in  the  New  Testament  of  such  an  one  as  having 
been  created  or  accepted  by  Jesus  Chrust  or  as. existing 
within  the  confines  of  Christianity.  The  great  organizer 


16 


of  the  church,  St.  Paul,  tells  us  that  its  officers,  in  his 
time  and  before,  comprised  apostles,  prophets,  teachers, 
helpers  those  gifted  with  healing  and  with  languages, 
but  he  does  not  mention  priests.  There  were  also  gov¬ 
ernmental  or  executive  officials,  namely,  presbyters, 
deacons  and  presiding  or  over-seeing  presbyters,  other¬ 
wise  called  bishops,  but  again  no  priests.  In  short, 
nothing  can  be  found  in  the  earliest  Christian  writings 
providing,  justifying  or  testifying  to  priests  as  minis- 
trants  or  official  residents  in  Christ’s  religion.  On  the 
contrary  we  find  amongst  those  earliest  writings  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  in  which  familiar  sacerdotal 
words  are  figurative^  used  to  comfort  the  Hebrews  ad- 
dressed,  under  what  they  evidently  regarded  as  their 
loss  in  the  absolute  and  complete  elimination  of  priest¬ 
hood  and  sacrifice  from  religion,  by  the  Divine  Author 
of  Christianity.  Sacrifice  and  intercessory  priests  pre¬ 
senting  vicarious  victims  are  utterly  lacking  in  the  re¬ 
ligion  of  Jesus,  because  He,  in  yielding  His  will  to  the 
will  of  the  Father,  satisfied  all  the  demands  of  God  for 
offerings,  from  His  Son  and  from  all  His  children, 
thenceforth  and  forever.  When  Christianity  came  in, 
priesthood  went  out  and  that  it  did  not  stay  out  was 
no  fault  of  Christianity,  which  is  Christ. 

But  when  the  infant  Church  went  forth  to  win  the 
world  for  Jesus  aud  His  service,  it  encountered  priests 
on  every  hand,  for  they  were  deeply  rooted  in  the  re¬ 
ligious  soil  of  the  world.  Priests  had  had  too  long  a 
tenure  of  religious  office  to  readily  relinquish  it  under 
the  teachings  of  Christianity.  It  was  of  course  against 
the  interests  of  priests  to  have  their  order  abolished 
and  their  caste  destroyed.  Their  pecuniary  prosperity 


17 


and  powerful  influence,  as  priests,  involved  too  much 
of  value  to  be  surrendered.  The  pagan  people,  too, 
were  wedded  to  the  priestly  institution.  How  could 
they  give  it  up?  It  provided  a  bulwark  between  them 
and  vindictive  deities.  It  offered  sacrifices  to  preserve 
them  from  afflictions  and  torments  and  losses,  physical 
and  spiritual.  It  came  to  them  by  inheritance  from 
times  afar  and  was  associated  with  ancestral  beliefs, 
customs  and  doings  not  easy  to  forget  or  to  sultify  by 
apostasy.  When,  therefore,  Christianity,  priestless  and 
unsacrificial,  was  presented  for  pagan  acceptance  it  was 
not  strange  that  many  viewed  it  with  head  critically 
one-sided  as  they  thought  “what  a  curious  and  unde¬ 
sirable  religion  this  must  be” — without  priests  or  altars 
or  sacrifices  or  symbolized  deities  of  any  kind. 

Christianity,  engaged  in  its  mission,  preaching  Jesus 
and  eternal  life,  was  taunted  by  pagans  with  being 
ridiculously  destitute  of  priests  and  sacrifices  and  those 
taunts  had,  naturally  some  influence  which  in  course  of 
time  produced  deplorable  changes  in  the  ministry  and 
worship  of  the  church.  The  Jewish  proselytes  to  Chris¬ 
tianity  also  contributed  to  the  same  end.  Judaism  was, 
in  a  way,  ancestral  to  Christianity.  Its  Scriptures, 
splendid  in  prophetical  literature,  but  still  shot  through 
with  sacrificial  priestly  teaching,  constituted  at  first  the 
only  sacred  books  or  Bible  of  the  Christians.  The  pages 
of  the  Old  Testament  provided  the  early  disciples  of 
Jesus  with  nourishment  for  the  sacerdotal  idea  when  it 
was  born,  of  Paganism,  in  the  church.  That  idea,  en¬ 
couraged  directly  and  indirectly  by  Jew  and  Pagan, 
anon  gave  token  of  quiescent  and  then  of  active  life  in 
the  Christian  Body;  it  grew  a  little  and  then  it  grew 


18 


apace  and  so,  for  the  sake  of  ministering  to  Pagans,  ac¬ 
ceptably  to  themselves,  and  of  adaptation  to  long  estab¬ 
lished  practices  of  the  Hebrews,  sacerdotalism  insidious¬ 
ly,  gradually,  harmfully  invaded  Christianity  until  in 
the  third  century  the  process  of  corrupting  pure  Chris¬ 
tianity  with  priesthood  was  pretty  well  advanced  and 
the  fourth  century  saw  sacerdotalism  firmly  established 
in  the  church  and  bringing  forth  abundantly  fruits 
after  its  kind.  Amongst  those  fruits,  early  or  late, 
were  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  assuming  an  unearthly 
dignity  and  “lording  it  over  Cod’s  heritage;"  confession 
of  sins  and  secrets  in  the  ear  of  a  priest  intervening  be¬ 
tween  God  and  penitent  sinners ;  spiritual  direction 
and  control  of  a  penitent’s  life  by  the  prescription  of 
pains  and  penalties  called  penance ;  the  constantly  re¬ 
peated  miracle  of  the  Mass,  whereby  the  bread  and  wine 
in  the  Lord’s  Supper  were  transubstantiated  into  the 
actual  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  and  thus  offered  sac- 
rificially  on  the  altar; — these  with  their  consequences 
and  accompaniments  of  idolatrous  poses,  prostrations, 
genuflexions  and  various  superstitions  characterized  the 
church  through  the  “catholic”  ages,  as  the  result  of 
sacerdotalism,  until  in  the  slow  but  sure  vital  progress 
of  humanity,  the  Benaissance  or  New-Birth  of  the 
human  mind  occured,  bringing  with  it  the  great  Refor¬ 
mation  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Do  the  things  above  enumerated,  and  their  like,  we 
inquire, — constitute  the  American  ideal  of  religion  ?  Do 
they  commend  themselves  to  the  genius  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  people?  Does  the  word  “catholic”  which  historic¬ 
ally  represents  them  blend  harmoniously* with  the  word 
which  stands  for  the  vast  continent  and  country  wherein 


19 


our  lot  is  cast?  Let  us  remember,  as  we  face  these 
questions,  that  “catholic'’  and  “priest,”  in  the  Natural 
History  of  Christianity,  go  together;  let  us  clearly  un¬ 
derstand  that  priests  are,  by  derivation  and  legitimate 
occupation,  sacrificing  officials  and  then  let  us  ask  our¬ 
selves  if  we  desire  to  advertise  to  the  religious  world 
that  our  Ministry  is  in  these  days  a  company  of 
“priests”  and  that  our  Protestant  character  as  a  church 
has  been  so  completely  changed  that  it  may  now  be 
fittingly  described  as  “American  Catholic?”  If  we  do 
desire  to  so  advertise,  of  course  we  will  do  it;  but,  while 
we  are  thinking  about  it,  it  may,  perhaps,  be  helpful  to 
recall  that  it  was  written  of  old  time,  “Those  whom  the 
gods  destroy  they  first  make  mad !” 


“Words  may  make  this  way  or  that  way,”  says  the 
cynical  critic,  speaking  of  theology  and  philosophy,  and 
he  is  more  or  less  encouraged  in  his  sneer  by  those 
churchmen  who  tell  us  that  there  are  “priests”  and 
“priests,”  and  that  we  must  discriminate  clearly,  if  not 
sharply,  between  them.  This  is  the  refuge  of  those  in 
the  church  who,  for  conscientious  reasons,  seek  to  wrest 
the  word  “priest”  to  its  own  destruction  by  using  it 
with  an  unnatural  meaning  or  with  a  forced  and  figura¬ 
tive  definition.  They  remind  us,  by  so  doing,  of  some¬ 
thing  which  has  been  said  about  keeping  a  promise  to 
the  ear  and  breaking  it  to  the  heart.  To  claim  exist¬ 
ence  for  two  sorts  of  priests  is  bitterly  to  disappoint 


20 


the  originals  of  I  lie  two  and — what  is  of  more  conse¬ 
quence — is  as  fatal  to  lucidity  as  the  advocacy  of  a 
double  morality,  or  of  more  than  one  sort  of  catholics. 
A  priest,  let  us  repeat,  is  a  sacrificing  official  and  the 
discharge  of  his  function  requires  a  propitiatory  victim. 
As  such  the  priest  has  been  a  figure  in  history  from 
time  immemorial.  His  form  rises  to  view  in  ancient 
Egypt,  in  Babylonia,  in  Assyria,  in  Israel,  in  Greece 
and  Borne  and  in  all  he  may  be  seen  pursuing  his  in¬ 
tercessory  vocation,  ottering  the  sacrifices,  slaughtering 
the  victims,  maintaining  the  altar  fires,  removing  the 
ashes,  caring  for  the  temple  furnishings  and  so  on,  in 
the  just  and  conscientious  discharge  of  duty  as  a  priest. 
What  a  clean-cut  historic  picture  he  appears !  How  un¬ 
equivocally  he  defines  himself !  Can  we  look  at  him  at 
work  and  doubt  what  a  priest  is  ?  Could  such  a  con¬ 
spicuous  and  perfectly  outlined  official  be  removed  from 
religion, — as  he  was  removed  by  Christianity, — and  yet 
his  name  be  retained  without  involving  infinite  con¬ 
fusion  and  harm?  To  call  any  other  kind  of  function¬ 
ary  a  priest  in  a  loose  or  a  figurative  way  is  to  incur 
the  protest  of  common  sense — which  is  the  Universal 
Reason — against  the  violation,  by  so  doing,  of  a  truth  of 
history. 

Figurative  language,  we  pause  to  observe,  has  its 
value  but  it  is  not  wholly  valuable  for  purposes  of  defini¬ 
tion.  It  decorates  sentences  and  lends  sprightliness  to 
pages,  nevertheless  it  is  always  in  some  degree  danger¬ 
ous  to  use  because  it  is  susceptible  of  being  taken  liter¬ 
ally.  Figurative  language  was  largely  responsible  for 
transmuting  the  Lord’s  Supper  into  the  Eucharistic 
Sacrifice ;  the  same  sort  of  language  also  had  its  share 


21 


in  providing  the  concept  which  developed  into  Transub- 
stantiation,  centuries  before  that  doctrine  was  defined 
and  made  dogmatic  in  a  Council  of  the  Church.  Hence, 
and  for  other  specific  reasons,  wisdom  would  seem  to  ad¬ 
vise  a  certain  wariness  in  the  use  of  figures  of  speech, 
or  in  the  double  use  of  adjudicated  words,  which  comes 
to  much  the  same  thing.  A  priest  is  a  priest  and  we 
know  what  that  is;  to  say  he  is  that  and  also  something 
quite  different  is,  as  it  seems  to  us,  unconsciously  to 
play  fast  and  loose  with  words  and  make  a  deplorable 
mess  of  many  things  in  many  minds.  If,  indeed,  any¬ 
one,  for  his  own  private  purposes,  should  see  fit  to  de¬ 
clare  that  a  Presbyterian  deacon  is  a  “priest”  we  pre¬ 
sume  that  he  would  be,  for  those  purposes,  privileged 
to  do  so;  but  we  fancy  the  deacon  would  thereupon  re¬ 
pudiate  the  title,  while  the  rest  of  the  world,  if  in¬ 
formed,  would  wonder  what  under  the  sun  the  singular 
man  was  talking  about.  To  attribute  to  any  officer  in 
any  church  a  “priestly”  character  in  a  poetic  or  ro¬ 
mantic  way  is  in  our  view  to  thoroughly  misrepresent 
him.  Or,  to  describe  a  “priest”  as  other  than  a  sacri¬ 
ficing  official ;  to  define  him  as  an  Illuminator  of  the 
way  of  Truth,  or  as  a  Leader  of  the  people  in  the  path 
of  spiritual  progress,  or  as  an  exceptional  Advocate  and 
Exemplar  of  righteousness  and  service  is  to  evacuate 
his  official  character  of  its  distinctive  meaning  and  to 
hopelessly  confound  him  with  the  prophet — his  anti¬ 
thesis,  if  not  his  antagonist,  in  all  respects.  We  have  no 
moral  right,  we  opine,  to  promote  indefiniteness  of 
speech  and  induce  confusion  of  mind  in  a  great  mass 
of  people  by  any  such  romantic  or  figurative  use  of 
language. 


22 


But  here  it  is  pertinent  for  someone  to  remind  us  that 
“priest”  is  mentioned  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
We  take  the  reminder  sympathetically,  for  we,  too, 
have  noticed  that  Priest  is  in  the  Prayer  Book  and  we 
beg  to  state  that,  as  loyal  churchmen,  we  accept  it,  in 
the  sense  in  which  it  is  therein  contained.  We  do  not 
take  “Priest”  in  the  Prayer  Book,  literally,  nor  yet  fig¬ 
uratively,  but  only  in  a  titular  sense.  The  name  itself, 
we  hardly  need  say,  was  an  inheritance  from  the  old 
Service  Books  of  pre-Reformation  times  and  was  a  word 
familiar  and  dear  to  the  people  by  its  long  association 
with  some  of  the  most  sacred  events  in  their  lives. 
There  was  fear  and  trembling  in  many  English  hearts 
in  Reformation  days — there  was  genuine  apprehension 
lest  the  changes  being  made  in  religious  forms  should 
imperil  or  impair,  in  the  popular  mind,  the  substance 
of  religion  itself.  And  so,  for  the  sake  of  soothing 
those  apprehensions  and  reassuring  the  people  by  a 
familiar  sound  it  was  thought  best  to  retain  the  word 
“priest,”  in  spite  of  grave  doctrinal  objections  to  it, 
seeking,  however,  to  neutralize  any  misleading  influ¬ 
ence  it  might  have,  by  placing  it  in  the  Prayer  Book  in 
propinquity  with  another  word  of  clerical  signification. 
For,  “Minister”  also,  we  take  leave  to  notice,  is  in  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  the  historical  atmosphere 
in  which  Prayer  Book  compilation  was  conducted  re¬ 
veals  that  “Minister”  and  “Priest,”  in  the  Prayer  Book 
sense,  are  synonymous  terms,  meaning  “Pastor”  and 
having  no  sacerdotal  or  sacrificial  significance  whatever 
“Priest”  appears  in  the  Prayer  Book  without  regard  to 
its  antecedents  and  for  the  purposes  of  rubrical  in¬ 
structions,  not  for  the  sake  of  sacerdotal  recognition. 


23 


The  things  the  titular  “Priest'’  is  instructed  to  do  are 
not  priestly  performances  at  all,  but  are  matters  of  de¬ 
tail  for  conducting  our  Protestant  Services  with  Prot¬ 
estant  decency  and  order.  To  give  a  “Minister”  rub¬ 
rical  direction  as  to  when,  or  where,  he  is  to  stand  in 
church  and  how  he  is  to  arrange  things  liturgical  for 
his  convenience,  is  not  by  any  means  to  confer  upon 
him,  or  to  presuppose  that  he  has,  sacerdotal  character 
or  duty.  The  “Priest”  whom  the  rubrics  direct  in  the 
Services  might  just  as  well  be  uniformly  designated 
either  Minister,  or  Presbyter,  or  Pastor,  so  far  as  the 
mind  of  this  church  regarding  his  official  character  is 
concerned.  It  is  the  particular  thing  to  be  done  and 
not  the  particularly  named  functionary  who  is  to  do  it 
that  the  church  indicates  when  in  the  Prayer  Book  she 
uses  the  word  we  now  have  under  consideration.  To 
be  sure,  “Priest”  is,  in  some  instances,  the  accredited 
title  of  the  man  who  is  to  do  the  given  things;  but  if 
we  are  intent  upon  knowing  what  that  title  means  we 
must  go,  in  the  first  place,  not  to  rubrics  or  Services, 
but  to  the  Ordinal ,  or  the  “Form  and  Manner  of  order¬ 
ing  Priests,”  in  our  Communion.  Therein  we  may 
plainly  see  how  a  “Priest”  is  defined  in  this  church,  by 
the  light  of  the  promises  a  candidate  is  called  upon  to 
make,  previous  to,  and  justifying,  his  ordination.  He 
makes  no  promise  and  receives  no  authority,  to  be  a 
sacrificing  official  offering  propitiatory  victims;  but  he 
pledges  himself  to  instruct  out  of  the  Holy  Scriptures 
the  people  committed  to  his  charge;  to  give  faithful 
diligence  alwnys  to  minister  the  Doctrine  and  Sacra¬ 
ments  and  the  discipline  of  Christ  as  the  Lord  hath 
commanded  and  as  this  church  hath  received  the  same; 


24 


to  be  ready  to  banish  and  drive  away  from  the  church 
all  erroneous  and  strange  doctrine  contrary  to  God’s 
Word  and  to  exhort  both  in  public  and  in  private  the 
sick  and  the  well  as  occasion  may  be  given;  to  be  dili¬ 
gent  in  Prayers  and  in  reading  the  Holy  Scriptures 
and  in  such  studies  as  help  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
same;  to  fashion  himself  and  his  family  according  to 
the  doctrine  of  Christ;  to  maintain,  as  much  as  possi¬ 
ble  quietness,  peace  and  love  among  all  Christian  peo 
pie  and  to  obey  his  Bishop  and  other  Ministers  who 
may  lawfully  have  charge  and  government  over  him. 
These  are  the  promises  which  a  candidate  for  Orders, 
at  the  proper  time,  in  our  church  makes,  and  there¬ 
upon  the  Bishop  who  is  to  ordain  him  prays  that  God 
will  give  the  man  strength  and  power  to  perform  the 
same  and  then  proceeds  to  confer  upon  him  authority 
to  execute  the  office  of  a  Priest  in  the  Church  of  God 
in  which  he  is  to  he  “a  faithful  Dispenser  of  the  Word 
of  God  and  of  the  Holy  Sacraments.”  Is  there  any¬ 
thing  in  those  promises  and  their  culmination  in  or¬ 
dination  which  the  most  tortured  ingenuity  of  the 
human  mind  could  convincingly  twist  into  a  declara¬ 
tion,  a  hint,  a  suspicion  even,  that  a  “priest”  in  our 
church  is  a  sacrificing  official  offering  victims,  or  is 
anything  less,  or  more,  than  a  consistent  religious 
teacher  of  Christianity  and  a  leader  and  representative 
of  the  people  in  public  worship  and  in  matters  pertain¬ 
ing  to  the  same?  If  there  is  not ,  then  we  would  like 
to  ask  what  becomes  of  that  solitary  phrase  in  the  Office 
for  the  ’’Institution  of  Ministers ”  (italics  our) — solitary 
in  the  Prayer  Book  “as  a  sparrow  alone  upon  the  house 
top”  and  yet  a  phrase  so  valiantly  waved  by  those  of  us 


25 


who  need  its  inspiration — what,  we  earnestly  desire  to 
ask,  becomes  of  “sacer dotal  Function”  in  view  of  the 
utter  lack  of  evidence  in  the  Ordinal  to  justify  it  or 
anything  like  it?  Why,  its  fate  might  be  described  by 
some — not  churchmen — as  a  vanishing  into  “airy  noth¬ 
ing  signifying  naught;”  but  we,  who  are  churchmen 
and,  as  such,  loyal  to  the  core,  would  simply  say  that  it 
lapses  into  the  purely  figurative — exhibits  itself  as  one 
of  those  figures  of  speech  against  the  use  of  which  we 
have  already  warned  ourselves,  because,  however  allur¬ 
ing,  they  are  dangerous  to  use  on  account  of  the  possi¬ 
bility  that  someone  may  take  them  literally.  Where 
there  is  literally  no  sacerdotal  function  in  the  Ministry, 
how  can  any  Minister  literally  possess  power  to  exercise 
it?  “Sacerdotal  Function/’  for  aught  we  know,  may  be 
an  euphemism  for  the  saying  of  Morning  and  Evening 
Prayer. 


y. 

“Priest"  in  the  Prayer  Book  indicating,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  titular  officer — that  is,  one  inheriting  the  title  of 
priest  without  the  priestly  function, — we  may  expect  to 
find  evidence  of  this,  not  only  in  the  Ordination  Service, 
which  we  have  examined,  but  also  in  the  other  Prayer 
Book  Services,  at  one  of  the  most  important  of  which, 
for  our  purpose,  we  now  propose  to  glance.  “Sacerdotal 
Function”  we  have  easily  perceived  to  be  a  figure  of 
speech,  poetizing,  amongst  other  ministerial  duties,  the 
saying  of  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer,  in  which  the 
titles  Priest  and  Minister  sympathetically  commingle 
as  they  also  do  in  the  Order  for  the  Holy  Communion. 


26 


It  would  be  passing  strange  if  one  figurative  expression 
in  our  Service  Book  should  dominate  and  set  aside  a 
multitude  of  literal  expressions  which,  in  the  same 
Book,  contradict  it.  That  lonesome  figure  of  speech — 
“sacerdotal  function” — must  therefore,  in  reason,  be 
interpreted  by  the  whole  character  of  the  rest  of  the 
Prayer  Book  including,  of  course,  the  Communion 
Office. 

Now,  what  is  the  Holy  Communion  in  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church?  To  begin  with  and  on  the  very  face 
of  it,  it  is  not  a  sacerdotal  Rite  or  Ceremony.  The 
Church  distinctly,  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  de¬ 
clares  it  to  be  “The  Lord’s  Supper.”  It  is,  as  we  are 
again  instructed  by  the  Church,  one  of  the  two  only 
Sacraments  ordained  by  Christ  Himself  and  a  sacra¬ 
ment,  the  Church  further  says,  is  an  outward  and  visi¬ 
ble  sign  of  an  inward  and  spiritual  grace  given  to  us, 
and  is  one  means  whereby  we  receive  that  spiritual  grace 
and  is  also  a  pledge  to  assure  us  that  we  do  receive  it. 
The  Holy  Communion  or  the  Lord’s  Supper  is,  there¬ 
fore,  plainly  not  a  sacerdotal  Rite — il  is  not  the  “mass,” 
nor  a  mass.  For,  what  is  the  “mass”?  The  word  is  of 
uncertain  origin  and  has  been  the  subject  of  much  dis¬ 
putatious  discussion  as  to  that  point  and  other  particu¬ 
lars.  It  may  have  been  derived  from  its  occurrence  in 
Latin  at  the  conclusion  of  ordinary  Church  services  to 
indicate  that  the  unbaptized,  or  “catechumens”  were 
to  “go”  or  depart  before  the  beginning  of  the  Com¬ 
munion  Office,  or  perhaps,  it  came  from  the  use  of  the 
same  word  after  the  conclusion  of  the  Holy  Communion, 
bidding  the  communicants  depart  in  peace;  or  perhaps 


27 


with  greater  probability,  it  may  have  issued  from  a  He¬ 
brew  word  meaning  oblation  or  offering,  originally  con¬ 
nected  with  the  sacrifices  in  the  Jewish  Church.  But, 
waiving  the  question  of  verbal  derivation,  which  is  of 
no  great  consequence  after  all,  there  can  be  no  reason¬ 
able  doubt  that  the  proper,  technical  sense  expressed 
by  “mass”  is  that  of  “offering,”  involving  the  idea  of 
sacrifice,  which,  by  Jewish  and  Pagan  associations  im¬ 
plied  a  victim  offered  by  a  priest.  Long  before  the 
Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  this  word  “mass" 
had  been  exclusively  employed  to  mean  what  we  desig¬ 
nate  as  the  Holy  Communion,  and  was  identified  with 
that  sacrificial  aspect  of  the  Sacrament  which  it  was  the 
chief  endeavor  of  the  Reformers  to  banish  from  the 
Church.  In  the  vigorous  controversial  language  of  the 
Reformation  period  the  “mass”  was  roughly  handled, — 
one  most  eminent  English  Reformer  declaring  it  to  be 
“a  very  masking  and  mockery  of  the  true  supper  of  the 
Lord,”  and  in  the  thirty-first  Article  of  Religion  of  the 
Church  of  England, — corresponding  with  the  same  ar¬ 
ticle  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church — “the  sacri¬ 
fices  of  masses,  in  the  which  it  was  commonly  said  that 
the  Priest  did  offer  Christ,  for  the  quick  and  the  dead 
to  have  remission  of  pain  or  guilt,”  are  denounced  as 
“blasphemous  fables  and  dangerous  deceits.” 

We  hereupon  observe  that  that  conception  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  which  is  known  as  the  “mass”  and  which 
is  denounced  by  the  Churches  of  the  Anglican  Com¬ 
munion,  is  characterized  by  the  offering  on  an  altar  by 
a  priest,  of  Christ  as  a  sacrifice  in  order  that  thereby 
the  living  and  the  dead  may  have  remission  of  pain 
or  guilt.  These  are  the  notes  of  the  “mass”  and  they 


28 


necessitate  the  transnbstantiation  of  bread  and  wine  in 
the  Lord’s  Supper  into  the  actual  Body  and  Blood  of 
Christ.  Of  course  there  is  no  difficulty  in  perceiving 
that  this  theory  of  the  Lord’s  Supper  requires  for  its 
practice  a  sacrificing  priest  offering  a  propitiatory  vic¬ 
tim.  But  do  we  find  any  such  requirement  in  the  “Or¬ 
der  for  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper,”  in 
our  Prayer  Book?  Let  us  see.  According  to  that  “Or¬ 
der”  the  Lord’s  Supper  is  administered  from  a  “Table/’ 
not  upon  an  altar.  “The  ‘Table’  at  the  Communion¬ 
time/’  says  the  rubric,  “having  a  fair  white  linen  cloth 
upon  it  shall  stand  in  the  body  of  the  church,  or  in  the 
chancel.”  The  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Ten  Command¬ 
ments  having  been  said  by  the  “ Minister ”  and  respond¬ 
ed  to  by  the  congregation ;  the  other  parts  of  the  ser¬ 
vice,  including  the  recital  of  the  Creed  and  the  recep¬ 
tion  of  the  Alms  and  other  Devotions  of  the  people, 
having  been  duly  rendered,  the  “Priest”  (=" Minister”) 
is  to  stand  before  the  “Table'’  and  say  the  “Prayer  of 
Consecration”  of  the  bread  and  wine.  Thus  far  in  our 
observation  not  the  slightest  indication  of  a  sacerdotal 
Rite  has  appeared.  No  altar,  no  victim,  no  sacrifice,  no 
sacrificing  priest  has  been  so  much  as  faintly  intimated. 
Still  further:  if  the  “Prayer  of  Consecration”  to  which, 
in  our  examination,  we  have  now  come  had  been  de¬ 
liberately  composed  as  a  polemical  treatise  against  the 
doctrine  of  priestly  sacrifice  it  could  not  have  been 
stronger,  or  clearer,  or  more  pointed  that  way  than  it 
is.  Over  and  over  again  in  this  Prayer  it  is  affirmed 
that  the  Lord’s  Supper  is  a  “memorial.”  With  studied 
frequency  this  fact  is  brought  to  view.  It  is  a  Service 
“in  remembrance  of  Christ’s  death  and  passion.”  It  is 


29 


a  fulfilling  of  Christ’s  commandment  “to  continue  a 
perpetual  memory  of  His  precious  death  and  sacrifice.” 
In  it  we  do  make  with  “holy  gifts”  of  offered  bread 
and  wine  “the  memorial  the  Son  has  commanded  us  to 
make.”  The  one  “full,  perfect  and  sufficient  sacrifice, 
oblation  and  satisfaction,”  by  Christ,  “for  the  sins  of 
the  whole  world”  is  thankfully  remembered  in  the  Lord’s 
Supper  and  in  that  remembrance  Christ’s  commandment 
is  fully  recognized  and  obeyed.  There  are  “offerings” 
in  this  Service,  but  not  of  victims.  There  are  figurative 
“sacrifices”  made,  but  not  propitiatory.  The  “sacrifice 
of  praise  and  thanksgiving”  is  therein  offered  to  God, 
but  praise  and  thanksgiving  are  not  “victims”  and  can¬ 
not,  therefore,  be  sacrificed  in  any  literal  or  sacerdotal 
sense.  The  offering  of  “ourselves,  our  souls  and 
bodies”  and  of  “our  bounden  duty  and  service”  are  not 
offerings  of  “victims”  either,  their  offering  is  simply  the 
declaration  and  performance  of  a  duty  to  extend  our 
lives  Godward,  according  to  the  commandments  and  ex¬ 
ample  of  Jesus  Christ.  All  through  the  Office,  the  me¬ 
morial  and  non-sacrificial  view  of  the  Lord’s  Supper  is 

taken  and  clearly  expressed;  the  elements  in  the  Sup¬ 
per  are  called,  even  after  the  act  of  consecration,  “bread 
and  wine,”  and  any  of  the  consecrated  “Bread  and 
Wine”  which  may  remain  “after  the  Communion”  are 
to  be  consumed  by  the  “Minister  and  other  Communi¬ 
cants.”  There  is  not,  in  this  Service,  the  remotest  sug¬ 
gestion  of  the  “Mass”  or  of  the  doctrinal  teachings  and 
assumptions  upon  which  the  Catholic  Eucharistic  Use  is 
based. 


30 


Where,  then,  and  by  what  authority  can  we  locate  a 
priest  and  his  sacrificial  work  in  the  Protestant  Epis¬ 
copal  Church?  Having  no  recognition  in  the  official 
standards  and  no  duty  assigned  him  in  the  worship  of 
this  Church  the  occupation  of  a  priest — excepting  a 
titular  one — would  be,  if  he  existed  in  our  Communion, 
like  that  of  Othello,  gone.  By  what  possible  affinity, 
then,  can  our  church  be  qualified  for  “American  Cath¬ 
olic”  as  a  name?  Catholic,  we  remember,  at  once  sug¬ 
gests  by  association,  priest  and  altar  and  sacrificial 
masses,  and  priestly  intervention  between  God  and  men  ; 
while  we  by  right  of  Protestant  inheritance  and  deter¬ 
mination  are  divested  and  innocent  of  all  such.  What 
notable  thing,  then,  could  we  accomplish  by  displaying 
“American  Catholic”  on  our  escutcheon  for  the  edifi¬ 
cation  of  the  world?  Well,  by  thus  stultifying  our¬ 
selves  we  could  possibly  cleave  our  church  in  twain, 
make  a  failure  of  our  mission  to  the  people  of  these 
United  States,  constitute  our  church  a  laughing  stock 
to  Roman  Catholics  wherever  to  them  we  are  known 
and  become  a  religious  by-word  and  a  token  of  reproach 
to  the  great  Protestant  bodies  surrounded  by  which  we 
live.  Perhaps,  for  most  of  us  that  would  be  too  notable 
and  also  just  a  little  too  much. 


VI. 

Jesus  Christ  founded  no  Church;  but  the  Church 
came  naturally  and  necessarily  into  being  as  a  means 
for  the  publication  of  the  Good  News  which  He  pro¬ 
claimed.  That  News  was,  that  all  men  are  sons  of  God 


31 


and  therefore  bound  by  the  great  ethical  law  of  per¬ 
fection  in  living  because  their  Origin,  namely,  their 
Father  in  heaven,  is  perfect.  Knowledge  of  this,  with 
all  that  it  involves  is  to  be  proclaimed,  according  to  the 
will  of  Jesus,  throughout  the  world  to  every  human 
creature.  Hence,  the  necessity  for  an  institution — an 
established  gathering  of  people — whose  duty  it  shall  be 
to  preserve  and  spread  abroad  the  Master’s  Good  News. 

In  connection  with  this  we  notice  that  in  the  meeting 
of  the  disciples  at  Pentecost  there  were  distinguished 
manifestations  of  gifts  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  interest 
of  the  proclamation  of  the  Master’s  Gospel.  Therein  we 
perceive  the  incipient  or  initiatory  institution  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Begun  then,  its  primitive  organiza¬ 
tion  was  completed  later.  Being  an  organization  for  the 
practical  purpose  of  preaching  the  Gospel,  the  Church 
contained  potentially  a  ministry  of  gospel  proclamation 
and  a  government  or  order  of  institutional  life.  This 
two-fold  function  of  the  leaders  and  representatives  of 
the  church  was  necessary  to  the  continued  existence  and 
the  fruitful  work  of  the  Christian  Institution.  There 
must  be  preaching  and  there  must  be  order.  Hence, 
there  must  be  men  devoted  to  preaching  and  to  ordering. 
Such  a  ministry,  therefore,  speedily  developed,  and  the 
easy  and  almost  casual  way  in  which,  seemingly,  it 
came  is  most  noticeable.  Like  a  fruit  from  a  tree,  or  a 
flower  from  a  plant  the  ministry  was  put  forth  by  the 
Body  of  the  believers  and  the  simplicity  with  which  it 
was  established  was  due  to  its  essentialness  to  the  pur¬ 
pose  for  which  the  Church  existed.  The  essential  in 
life,  we  notice,  arrives  without  fuss,  while  the  arbitrary 
is  inducted  ceremoniously  and  with  much  din. 


32 


Now,  .Christianity,  bo  it  remembered,  was  born,  so  to 
speak,  in  the  residence  of  Judaism  and  the  household 
belongings  of  Judaism  were  round  about  it.  There  was 
the  Jewish  temple  with  its  sacrificial  paraphernalia — 
its  altar,  its  incense,  its  holy  places,  its  imposing  cere¬ 
monies,  its  atmosphere  of  awe-creating  mystery  and  its 
company  of  priests.  There,  too,  were  the  synagogues — 
“the  houses  of  assembling"  and  of  teaching — ancient  in 
origin  and  to  this  our  day  in  use  amongst  the  Jews. 
The  synagogue  was  destitute  of  altar,  sacrifices,  incense 
and  holp  places ;  but  it  contained  a  pulpit  at  which  the 
Scriptures  were  read,  religion  and  morality  were  ex¬ 
pounded,  and  from  which  the  devotions  of  the  people  in 
the  synagogue  Service  were  led.  It  runs  with  our  pur¬ 
pose  in  writing  this  that  the  reader,  the  preacher  and 
the  leader  of  devotions  were  “unconsecrated  by  any 
special  rites  and  unrestricted  by  any  rule  of  succession/5 

Briefly  thus  we  recall  the  religious  dualism  which  ex¬ 
isted  in  Judaism  at  the  beginning  of,  and  long  before, 
the  Christian  era.  The  Temple  and  the  Synagogue, 
with  all  that  they  implied, — the  temple  without  a  pulpit 
and  the  synagogue  without  an  altar — composed  that 
duality,  dwelling  together  as  they  did  in  peace  and  har¬ 
mony  and,  moreover,  in  close  contact  with  primitive 
Christianity,  constituting  for  it  an  environment  most 
influential  for  formative  purposes. 

Now,  the  dominant  men  amongst  the  disciples,  name¬ 
ly,  the  Apostles,  when  the  Christian  Church  was  taking 
shape,  were  perfectly  familiar,  by  birth  and  by  habit  of 
life,  with  both  the  Temple  and  the  Synagogue  and  the 
religious  procedures  therein.  They  were  well  acquainted 


33 


with  the  richness  of  the  Temple  ceremonial  and  its  sen¬ 
suous  appeal  and  also  with  the  severe  simplicity  of  the 
Synagogue  service  with  its  moral  and  spiritual  edifica¬ 
tion.  Life-long  education  had  convinced  them  of  the 
need  of  sacrifices  for  sins  and  intuitively  they  must 
have  been  aware  that  their  companions  in  life  loved 
gorgeousness  in  religious  services  with  oriental  fervor. 
Why  then,  did  the  apostles,  when  they  sought  a  pattern 
for  shaping  the  Christian  Church  turn  from  the  ritual 
superiority  of  the  Temple  to  the  comparative  inferiority 
of  the  institutes  of  the  Synagogue?  For,  that  was  what 
they  did  and  there  could  have  been  but  one  reason  jus¬ 
tifying  such  a  course.  That  reason  was  in  the  fact  that 
the  apostles  knew  the  transitory  and  prophetic  nature 
of  the  Temple  Service.  Under  the  influence  of  Jesus 
they  had  come  to  understand  that  the  sacrificial  con¬ 
tents  of  the  Temple  were  only  types  and  portents  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  His  one  and  onlv  sacrifice  for  the 
sins  of  the  whole  wrorld.  Convinced  of  that,  of  what 
further  use  was  the  Temple  and  its  accessories  to  the 
apostles,  or  to  the  Christian  community?  The  Temple 
types,  having  been  completely  realized,  wTere  no  longer 
available  for  effective  employment.  They  had  expended 
their  value  and  would  have  been  empty  and  merely  in¬ 
trusive  in  the  organization  of  the  New  Religion  born 
in  the  house  of  Judaism,  but  destined  to  supercede  it  in 
the  spiritual  service  of  mankind.  Priests  were  no  long¬ 
er  necessary.  No  longer  were  bleeding  victims  and 
smoking  altars  significant  of  anything  to  come.  All 
that  could  come  had  come  and  the  waiting  world  was 
already  taking  deep  breath  of  the  new  life  in  Christ  and 
sighing  with  ecstatic  relief.  It  was  a  saved  world  out 


34 


upon  which  the  apostles  looked,  their  eyes  shining  with 
the  purpose  of  eternal  life.  It  was  a  world  no  longer  in 
need  of  sacrifice,  but  ’twas  desperately  in  need 
of  teaching.  It  was  waiting  to  be  instructed  in 
the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  to  be  grounded  and  settled 
in  His  revelation  and  built  up  in  the  faith  of  Him. 
That  form  of  Christian  institution  which  could  best  do 
teaching,  would  be  the  one  best  adapted  to  work,  under 
the  apostolic  commission  to  preach  the  Gospel.  And 
there,  ready  to  hand  as  a  model,  was  the  Synagogue  of 
God's  ancient  people,  with  no  color  of  sacrifice  in  its 
composition  and  no  vested  priesthood  to  perpetuate  a 
memory  of  a  vanishing  Past.  The  Christian  Church, 
therefore,  soon  took  shape  on  the  lines  of  the  Synagogue. 
From  some  points  of  view  it  might  seem  as  if  the  Church 
took  bodily  possession  of  the  Synagogue  for  its  own  oc¬ 
cupancy.  At  all  events  it  is  true  that  in  officially  fur¬ 
nishing  the  Church,  so  to  speak,  the  apostles  took  noth¬ 
ing  from  the  ecclesiastical  machinery  of  the  Temple  but, 
on  the  contrary,  introduced  much  which  corresponded 
remarkably  and  unmistakably  with  arrangements  in 
the  other  Institution. 

The  governing  and  ministering  body  of  the  Syna¬ 
gogue  consisted,  we  know,  of  elders,  some  of  whom 
judged  the  affairs  of  the  congregation,  and  others  of¬ 
ficiated  publicly  as  religious  ministers.  These  led  the 
prayers,  provided  for  reading  the  Scriptures,  or  Law, 
and  upon  occasion  preached.  They  were  known,  indi¬ 
vidually,  as  the  “Angel  of  the  Church/’  or  “bishop  of 
the  Congregation.”  This  is,  obviously,  suggestive  of  the 
origin  of  an  eminent  ecclesiastical  title  of  later  days. 
The  “Minister  of  the  Synagogue,”  as  he  was  also  called, 


35 


did  not  himself  read  the  Scriptures  publicly,  but  at  every 
Service  be  called  out  of  the  congregation  some  of  those 
lie  considered  qualified  to  read,  and  then,  during  the 
reading  stood  by,  carefully  watching  or  overseeing  the 
reader  and  correcting  him  if  he  made  mistakes.  Hence, 
he  was  “Overseer"  or  “Episcopos."  We  also  learn  of  al¬ 
moners  or  “deacons”  in  the  synagogue,  whose  duty  it 
was  to  care  for  the  poor,  and  who  were  called  “Pastors" 
by  virtue  of  their  ministrations.  That  these  and  other 
characteristics  of  the  Synagogue  adopted  by  the  apos¬ 
tles  in  instituting  the  Church,  bare  mention  of  which 
must  content  us,  give  evidence  that  there  was  no  priest¬ 
hood  therein,  seems  plain  enough  to  the  open  mind. 
Not  only,  however,  in  the  names  of  the  primitive 
Church  office-holders,  but  in  the  numerous  places  of  re¬ 
ligious  Service,  in  the  nature  of  the  Services  them¬ 
selves,  in  the  absence  of  Vestments,  in  the  lack  of  Min¬ 
isterial  Succession  and  of  an  altar,  in  the  pulpit  or 
raised  desk  for  the  reader  and  preacher — in  these  pe¬ 
culiarities,  common  as  they  were  to  both  the  Synagogue 
and  the  Church,  there  is  ample  proof  that  the  public 
worship  of  God  in  the  Synagogue,  which  was  moral  and 
not  sacrificial,  was  transferred  by  the  apostles  to  the 
spiritual  regimen  of  the  Christian  Institution.  Much 
more  evidence  to  the  same  end  might  easily  be  adduced 
if  we  were  writing  an  extended  essay  instead  of  our  pres¬ 
ent  endeavor.  But  even  the  scanty  allusions  we  have 
made  may  quicken  memories,  and  thus  illustrate  anew 
the  truth  that  “a  word  to  the  wise  is  sufficient.” 

Did  somebody  say  that  “American  Catholic"  would  be 
a  good  name  for  our  Branch  of  the  Church,  rooted,  as 
it  is,  in  primitive  Christianity  and  the  Protestantism 


36 


which  restored  it  in  Reformation  times?  We  believe 
somebody  did  so  say,  and  the  hearing  of  it  makes  us 
wonder  if  the  authors  of  the  proposed  name  expect  to 
float  it  with  inspiration  drawn  from  the  early  days  of 
pure  Christianity  ecclesiastically  modelled  on  the  sim¬ 
plicity  of  the  “houses  of  assembling"  or  Synagogue  of 
God.  If  not  from  that  source,  then,  whence  will  our 
“American  Catholics7’  derive  inspiration  to  demonstrate 
the  fitness  of  their  name? 


VII. 

Man  has  been  defined  as  a  religious  animal,  and  he 
may  also  be  described,  in  a  general  way,  as  an  ungrate¬ 
ful  animal,  especially  in  the  higher  region  of  his  re¬ 
ligious  life.  Created  with  a  religious  instinct  which  is 
an  essential  part  of  his  being  and  by  virtue  of  which  he 
is  naturally  religious,  he  originally  exercised  this  in¬ 
stinct  with  a  very  crude  and  imperfect  notion  of  what 
it  was.  In  common  with  all  that  man  had  and  w^s,  in 
the  beginning,  religion  was  low  in  its  expressions  of 
life.  But  it  was  not  to  remain  low.  From  its  early 
crudities — its  deification  of  natural  objects,  its  fetishes, 
its  dark  fears  and  superstitions,  its  cruelties  and  im¬ 
moralities  it  was  destined  to  evolve,  as  the  ages  rolled 
along,  the  highest  human  qualities  and  relations,  until 
“in  the  fulness  of  the  times”  it  should  illumine  the 
world  with  the  splendor  of  man’s  spiritual  destination. 
That  destination  was  early  indicated  by  intimations, 
intuitive  and  prophetic,  of  the  subordination  of  the 
physical  and  temporal  to  the  spiritual  and  eternal  in 
life,  embracing  as  it  does  religion.  Passing  through 


37 


phase  after  phase  of  development  on  its  upward  way, 
religion  at  last  brought  man  to  Christianity,  or,  to  speak 
more  accurately,  in  these  technical  days,  to  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Therefrom  the  sun  of  righteousness 
shone  in  full  effulgence  upon  man,  revealing  to  him  his 
divine  family  origin  with  its  necessary  implications,  one 
of  which  was  the  spiritual  nature  of  the  worship  which 
he  must  render  the  Almighty  Father  in  heaven.  Because 
God  is  a  Spirit  He  must  be  worshiped  by  man  in  spirit 
and  in  truth.  This  is  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  re¬ 
garding  worship.  Mankind  was  slowly  led  to  the  ful¬ 
ness  of  that  teaching  by  numerous  preceding  and  partial 
school-masters,  notable  and  final  amongst  which  was 
Judaism.  When  Judaism  could  carry  man  no  further 
towards  his  destiny  it  halted  on  the  threshold  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  and  surrendered  its  pupil  to  the  waiting  Christ. 
Under  His  tutelage  formal  religion,  sanctioned  by  ex¬ 
ternal  authority,  was  clearly  perceived  to  illustrate  a 
mistaken  conception  of  the  Divine  Father’s  will.  Man 
had  not,  indeed,  altogether  missed  this  truth  all  the 
days  of  his  schooling,  although  it  had  lurked  and  nes¬ 
tled  in  the  shadows  cast  in  times  of  ignorance  at  which 
God  is  said  to  have  winked.  But  now  there  was  no 
blinking  the  old  partially  expressed  truth  which  Jesus 
Christ  made  whole  and  new  by  his  full  declaration  and 
enforcement  of  it.  God’s  worship  must  be  in  man’s 
spirit — his  body  cannot  conceive  it.  Bodily  expressions 
are  no  essential  part  of  worship.  Burnt  offerings  and 
sacrifices  and  offerings  for  sin  God  would  not — but  the 
human  will  bent  before  the  will  of  God  and  the  spirit 
of  man  soaring  to  God  in  adoration  and  praise  con¬ 
stitute  the  worship  which  the  Father  demands,  for 


38 


which  there  is  no  substitute  and  with  which  there  can 
be  no  pompromise. 

Conditioning  this,  however,  is  the  fact  that  expres¬ 
sion  is  the  imperative  mood  of  human  nature,  and  that 
therefore  man’s  spirit  without  power  or  means  of  ex¬ 
pressing  itself  would  be  in  evil  case  in  a  world  of  flesh 
and  sense.  Hence  man  has  power  of  expression  by 
means  of  physical  instrumentation  of  his  spiritual  con¬ 
ceptions  and  emotions.  And  so  the  early  Christians, 
fresh  and  warm  from  the  Master's  teaching,  released 
their  heartful  worship  in  simple,  spontaneous  activities, 
inspired  by  memories  of  the  precepts  and  example  of 
their  departed  Lord. 

The  material  and  arrangement  of  Christian  services 
in  the  days  of  the  Apostles  would,  doubtless,  be  rejected 
by  many  modern  Christians  as  esthetically  poverty- 
stricken  and  liturgically  lean.  But  in  the  first  warm 
flush  of  spiritual  enthusiasm  over  the  new  found  and 
priceless  treasure  of  the  gospel,  worshipful  expression 
was  valued  by  its  earnestness  and  depth  of  sincerity, 
rather  than  by  its  ornateness  and  glitter.  We  gather 
the  details  of  Apostolic  worship  from  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  itself.  There  was  prayer  and  praise  and  admoni¬ 
tion.  The  gathered  disciples  taught  and  admonished 
each  other  in  all  wisdom  in  Psalms  and  Hymns,  in 
spiritual  songs,  singing  writh  gratitude  in  their  hearts 
to  the  Lord,  giving  thanks  at  all  times  on  account  of 
all  things  to  the  God  and  Father  of  all.  There  were 
supplications  and  prayers  and  intercessions  for  all  mefi ; 
there  was  reading  of  the  scriptures  as  a  part  of  the 
service;  there  was  preaching,  or  exhortation  and  in¬ 
struction  addressed  to  the  congregation ;  there  were 


39 


formal  contributions  to  the  needs  of  the  poorer  breth¬ 
ren  and  there  was  “the  breaking  of  the  Loaf”  or  the 
administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  It  was  all  very 
simple  and  unpretentious,  yet  joyous  with  tuneful 
tokens  of  the  melody  which  was  ringing  in  grateful 
hearts.  The  services  thus  alluded  to  were  some  of  them — 
probably  not  many — held  in  Jewish  Synagogues  whose 
congregations  had  probably  in  a  body  been  converted 
to  Christianity.  There  were  other  meeting  places — 
upper  chambers  or  worship  rooms;  later,  specially  con¬ 
structed  buildings  before  the  times  when  basilicas, 
those  splendid  public  halls  where  Roman  Justice  took 
her  seat,  were  by  favor  of  Christian  Emperors  occupied 
for  Church  Services.  Upon  these  and  the  like  things 
we  need  not  dwell.  Exteriors  did  not  count  for  much 
with  the  disciples  in  those  days,  for  the  interior  life 
of  the  Church  was  so  illumined  and  glorified  by  the 
Good-News  of  Jesus,  that  mere  buildings,  together  with 
the  ceremonies  performed  therein,  were  matters  of 
entirely  secondary  importance,  and  inferior  interest. 

But  this  was  not  so  for  long.  Soon  the  shadows  of 
coming  changes  were  casting  themselves  before.  The 
pristine  simplicity  of  “the  sweet  Gallilean  dream”  come 
true  in  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men,  began  to  be  blurred 
and  confused  with  memories  issuing  from  the  religious 
life  which  had  gone  before.  Amongst  the  Jewish  con¬ 
verts  arose  Judaizing  teachers  mingling  the  elements 
of  the  Law  with  the  truth  of  the  Gospel.  These  strove 
to  restore  the  principles,  and  in  modified  application,  the 
practices  of  the  ancient  Jewish  religion.  Defeated,  gen¬ 
erally,  in  their  purpose,  they  succeeded  to  some  extent, 
and  bye-and-bye  they  succeeded  some  more.  Old 


40 


habits  are  difficult  to  extirpate.  Long  accepted  prin¬ 
ciples,  even  after  rejection,  have  wondrous  recuperative 
power.  The  peace  of  early  Christianity  was  disturbed 
because  these  things  were  so,  and  aided  anon  by  pagan 
influences  a  covert  revolution  worked,  and  gradually 
the  old  ideas  and  the  old  words  came  into  new  use, 
and  “priest,”  “altar, ”  “sacrifice”  were  again — and  this 
time  in  Christianity — on  the  lips  and  influencing  the 
lives  of  men. 

The  claim  that  this  condition  of  things  was  the 
natural  result  of  a  legitimate  process  of  development, 
dissolves  in  the  recollection  that  development  in 
Christendom  is  of  two  kinds,  namely,  a  biological  and 
an  ecclesiastical,  the  last  mentioned  being  false  and 
the  other  natural  and  true.  A  biological  development 
is  from  within;  it  is  a  growth  or  unfolding  from  a 
germ  of  true,  though  hidden  life,  and  must,  therefore, 
be  in  the  Church  in  accordance  with  the  Master’s  will 
and  intention.  Contrariwise,  an  ecclesiastical  develop¬ 
ment  is  from  without — it  is  an  accretion — something 
stuck  on  externally — it  clings  barnacle-like  to  the  sur¬ 
face  of  the  Christian  Institution,  impeding  its  prog¬ 
ress,  to  its  haven  across  the  waves  of  this  troublous 
world.  Of  this  latter,  or  false,  sort  of  development 
was  the  recrudesence  of  sacerdotalism  in  religion  when 
it  appeared  in  Christianity.  It  was  reactionary.  It 
was  a  facing  away  from  the  new  illumination  of  Truth 
and  Love  towards  the  shadowy  background  againsf 
which  that  Light  of  the  world  was  gloriously  displayed. 
It  meant  a  rejection  of  the  liberty  where-with  Christ 
had  made  men  free — for  a  return  to  the  bondage  from 
which  they  had  been  delivered.  It  meant  a  lot  of 


41 


tilings  derogatory  to  man,  but  deepest  and  most  of  all, 
when  traced  to  its  roots,  it  meant  that  man  was  un¬ 
grateful  in  the  higher  region  of  his  religious  life.  Un¬ 
grateful  he  certainty  seems  to  have  been  for  some  of 
the  richest  blessings  vouchsafed  him  in  early  Christian¬ 
ity  pure  and  true;  freedom  from  the  law,  from  pro- 
pitiary  sacrifice,  from  priestly  intervention,  and  we 
cannot  repress  the  suspicion  that  he  must  have  been 
ungrateful  for  every  lift — every  upward  movement — in 
the  progress  of  religion  from  the  beginning  of  his  earth¬ 
ly  career.  History  seems  in  very  many  instances  to 
justify  our  suspicion  and  to  make  us  uncertain  whether 
the  sins  of  the  fathers  will  be  interminably  repeated 
by  the  children  in  the  matter  of  ungrateful  hearts. 

Are  we  prepared  to  perpetuate  in  our  day  and  gen¬ 
eration  the  basest  of  all  sins,  ingratitude,  and  in  the 
highest  region  of  our  life  ?  Are  we  so  unappreciative 
of  our  Protestant  Christian  heritage — do  we  hold  it 
so  lightly — that  we  will  ever  consent  to  call  ourselves 
“American  Catholics”  and  then  become  such  in  spirit 
and  in  truth? 

“He  that's  ungrateful  has  no  guilt  but  one , 

All  other  crimes  may  pass  for  virtues  in  him  A 


VIII. 

We  have  endeavored  in  these  pages  to  present  impres¬ 
sions  produced  upon  our  mind  by  various  important 
phases  of  history  and  a  number  of  plain  facts  in  our 
Prayer  Book  which  seem  to  bear  upon  the  proposal  to 
substitute .  “American  Catholic”  for  the  name  of  the 


42 


Protestant  Episcopal  Church.  In  so  doing  we  have  not 
entered  upon  a  controversy,  nor  have  we  engaged  in  a 
discussion;  for  it  seems  to  us  doubtful  if  controversy 
ever  really  converted  anybody,  and  discussion,  while  in¬ 
teresting  in  a  way,  proves  oftentimes,  eventually,  a 
weariness  to  the  soul.  But  “impressions”  are  more  easily 
carried  and  make  smaller  demands  upon  sustained  crit¬ 
ical  attention.  They  are  quite  a  fashion  of  our  time, 
too, — with  painters  and  sculptors  and  writers,  also,  they 
have  vogue,  and  with  such  they  seem  to  lend  themselves 
to  rather  satisfactory  results,  at  any  rate  in  the  opinions 
of  many.  And  so,  we  have  been  giving  “impressions," 
religious  .and  ecclesiastical,  and  we  were  impressed  as 
we  passed  along,  with  the  ingratitude  of  man  especially 
in  the  higher  region  of  his  religious  life. 

Ingratitude  was  a  sin  conspicuously  seen,  we  thought, 
in  the  reaction  amongst  the  early  Christians  from  pure 
Christianity  to  priesthood  and  propitiary  sacrifices, 
which  were  characteristics  of  Judaism  and  Paganism. 
From  regarding  God  as  a  Sovereign  and  a  dread  Judge 
to  be  appeased,  approachable  only  through  a  long  ave¬ 
nue  of  sacerdotal  representatives,  men  were  led  by  His 
Son  Christ  to  regard  God  as  the  beneficent  Father, 
close  at  hand,  directly  accessible,  easy  to  be  entreated 
and  constantly  ready  to  bless  and  comfort  with  His  love 
and  favor.  Men  had  been  set  free  from  the  inferior 
bindings  of  religion  and  yet  so  unappreciative  of  their 
spiritual  freedom  did  they  soon  become,  that  they  un¬ 
gratefully  turned  back  to  bondage  and  made  as  nought 
the  wonderful  deliverance  achieved  for  them  by  Jesus 
Christ.  It  seems  to  us  as  we  reflect,  a  case  of  ingrati¬ 
tude,  and  ingratitude,  we  fancy,  runs  characteristically, 


43 


like  a  black  thread,  through  all  the  pages  of  religious 
history. 

Xow,  ingratitude  appears  as  a  matter  of  necessity  to 
issue  in  disloyalty.  To  be  ungrateful  for  benefits  seems 
inevitably  to  involve  disloyalty  to  the  source  or  the 
ideals  of  given  benefactions.  The  Christian  ideal  of 
life  is  a  spiritually  safe  life,  built  on  belief  and  trust 
in  the  unfailing  love  of  God  as  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ.  The  upbuilding  of  that  life  is  to  be,  and  must 
be,  an  individual  human  achievement.  Ho  man  and 
no  number  of  men  can  possibly  build  for  any  other 
man,  or  number  of  men,  a  safe  spiritual  life.  Every 
man,  according  to  the  principles,  or  ideals,  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  to  “build  himself  up" — is  to  “work  out  his 
own  salvation/’  which  means  possession  of  a  character, 
safe  to  possess  at  any  time,  in  any  world.  To  this 
end  God  works  with  men,  inspiring  them  by  His  Spirit, 
leading  them,  directing  them,  as  they  work  on  them¬ 
selves,  to  His  glory  which  is  their  own  best  being. 
Hence,  for  men  to  vacate  this  high  privilege  and  duty 
in  favor  of  a  body  of  priests,  who  are  merely  other  men 
after  all ;  to  accept  from  those  other  men  the  offering 
of  propitiatory  sacrifices  and  all,  or  any,  of  the  com¬ 
plicated  religious  externalities  of  times  before  Christ, 
was  upon  the  part  of  certain  early  Christians,  if  we 
see  straight,  an  exhibition  of  ingratitude  embodied  in 
disloyalty  to  the  ideals  of  religious  life,  uplifted  for 
our  guidance  heavenward  by  the  Son  of  Man. 

Later  on  in  the  history  of  Christianity  the  same  sort 
of  thing  may  be  observed.  Priestcraft  and  all  that 
goes  therewith  having  obtained  residence  in  the 
Church,  by  the  unconscious  disloyalty  of  those  early 


44 


Christians,  held  its  place  for  centuries  until  the  great 
awakening  of  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity  in 
the  Reformation — which  event  is  pleasantly  referred 
to  by  some  enthusiastic  “American  Catholics''  as  “the 
catastrophe  of  the  sixteenth  century!"  The  heroic 
struggles  made  for  liberty  in  Christ  at  that  strenuous 
period  of  the  Church's  life ;  the  martyrs'  blood  so  free¬ 
ly  shed ;  the  fires  that  so  fiercely  burned  at  Smithfield 
and  at  Oxford;  the  matchless  courage  for  the  truth 
then  displayed,  need  not  to  be  recounted  here, — the 
memory  of  those  deeds  and  days  lives  now  in  countless 
hearts  as  having  won  in  England's  realm  the  inherit¬ 
ance  of  our  own  dear  Church  in  this  free  land,  the 
blessings  of  Protestant  Christianity  which  we  cherish 
and  defend.  But  history  repeats  itself  in  what  looks 
to  us  very  like  ingratitude  and  disloyalty  to-day,  and 
Reformation  battles  seem  likely,  in  our  generation, 
and  later,  to  be  fought  again.  It  is  lacking  in  “breadth" 
to  be  grateful  for  divine  blessings — is  it  not?  It  is 
“narrow"  to  be  loyal — is  it  not  ?  It  is  “intolerant" — is 
it?  or  is  it  not? — to  resist  attempted  destruction, — to 
resent  the  caressing  hand  upon  one's  shoulder,  so  to 
speak,  when  the  fellow-hand  is  seen  to  hold  threaten¬ 
ingly  the  gleaming  knife  all  ready,  just  underneath 
one's  rib  number  five !  These  are  general  questions, 
impersonally  addressed,  but  answers  volunteered  to 
them  may  indicate  one's  attitude  towards  the  preserva¬ 
tion  of  the  truth  “As  this  Church  hath  received  the 
same."  Every  clergyman  ministering  in  “this  Church" 
is  so  doing  upon  testimony  of  his  loyalty  to  the  doc¬ 
trine,  discipline  and  worship  of  the  Protestant  Episco¬ 
pal  Church.  Do  “masses"  constitute  a  part  of  that 


45 


worship  ?  Are  auricular  confession  and  penance  a  part 
of  that  discipline?  Are  the  Immaculate  Conception 
and  Mariolatry  included  in  that  doctrine?  Is  there 
any  legitimate  or  essential  difference  between  our  teach¬ 
ing  and  liturgical  practices  and  those  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church?  There  are  clergymen  officiating  in 
our  chancels  who  apparently  do  not  clearly  recognize 
such  differences.  They  name  and  conduct  services, 
they  wear  vestments  and  adopt  attitudes  and  poses 
which  unmistakably  suggest  a  religious  world  other  than 
Protestant.  They  advertise  and,  presumably,  they  offer 
“masses,”  high,  low  and  requiem — of  what  other  varie¬ 
ties,  if  any,  we  are  not  informed.  If  “Mass”  were 
merely  another  and  a  synonymous  name  for  the  Lord’s 
Supper,  even  then  the  use  of  it  would  be  confusing  and 
unwarranted.  But  as  it  stands  for  something  doc- 
trinally  quite  different  from  and  opposed  to  our  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  Lord’s  Supper — namely,  a  propitiatory  sac¬ 
rifice — to  use  it  in  our  Church  involves,  as  it  seems 
to  us,  disloyalty  to  our  well  known  Protestant  stand¬ 
ards  to  which  we  are  solemnly  pledged.  The  clergy¬ 
men  who  do  this  and  other  such  things  ecclesiastical  in 
our  Church  are  most  active  in  agitation  for  the  adop¬ 
tion  of  “American  Catholic”  in  lieu  of  the  name  we 
have  borne  so  long.  It  is,  therefore,  a  short  and  easy 
inference  from  the  proposal  to  change  our  name,  to  the 
principles  and  practices  which  lie  behind  the  offered 
name  and  give  distinctive  color  and  intention  to  the 
proposal.  To  name  us  and  then  to  make  us  “catholic” 
seems  to  be  the  plan.  Does  anybody  imagine  that  the 
out-carrying  of  such  a  plan  would  commend  us  to  the 
confidence  and  admiration  of  the  American  people  ? 


46 


How  much  we  have  already  lost  in  the  regard  of  the 
people  in  this  land  by  the  growing  sacerdotalism, 
which,  during  fifty  years  last  past,  has  assumed  to  rep¬ 
resent  us,  no  man  can  with  anything  like  precision,  be¬ 
gin  to  tell.  We  venture,  however,  the  tentative  opin- 
ion,  that  had  it  not  been  for  that  sacerdotal  growth  and 
misrepresentation,  two  million  communicants  instead 
of  about  one  million  would  be  recorded  to  the  credit 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  to-day. 

That  name  for  us,  after  all  is  said,  is  ideally  descrip¬ 
tive.  It  is  peculiarly  felicitous  because  it  is  so  accurate 
a  reflection  of  our  Churchly  character.  We  are  not 
Roman  Episcopal,  nor  Creek  Episcopal,  but  Protestant 
Episcopal.  Were  we  named  merely  the  Protestant 
Church,  the  name  would  be  meaningless  in  a  land  full 
of  other  Protestants.  Had  we  been  christened  the  Epis¬ 
copal  Church,  we  should  be,  as  Professor  Nash  said, 
“standing  on  one  leg/’  and  our  course  would,  in  con¬ 
sequence,  be  irregular  and  halting.  But  the  combination 
of  Protestant  and  Episcopal  so  happily  presents  the 
doctrinal  and  the  governmental  characteristics  which 
distinguish  us,  that  the  greatest  difficulty  has  long  been 
experienced  in  attempting  a  better  or  even  another  one. 
Our  last  impression  is,  that  we  will  surely  be  loyal  to 
this  name, — we  surely  will  if  we  know  in  this,  our  day, 
the  things  which  will  make  with  us  for  prosperity  and 
peace. 

As  for  “American  Catholic”  we  dismiss  it  with  grave 
regard  to  the  limbo  of  a  multitude  of  forgotten  follies. 


47 


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